The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to demonstrate thought. A human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test.

The way I see it, there are two ways to build a computer that can pass this test. The first way is to understand each one of the brain’s functionality and implement it by software. This means we must fully comprehend each aspect of human thinking in order to copy these successfully and fool the judge that the computer he’s talking to is actually a human. I don’t know why, but it seems all the A.I. scientists are trying to go this way when it’s clear we will need a full understanding of human psychology, logic, emotions, humor, etc. Seems like passing a Turing test this way is centuries away.

The other method is to focus on how a single brain cell works and interact with other brain cells, and then simply scan a human brain in great detail and recreate the whole neural network in software code. This seems to me like a much easier task since we don’t actually have to understand how humans think. We already understand pretty well how a neuron works and the mechanism behind brain cells interaction, so I think it can be achieved in a few decades. One problem with this method is that it may be necessary to slice the brain to small pieces while scanning, meaning the physical scanned human will be killed, but I’m sure there will be plenty of volunteers. Think about it, moving from a carbon-based existence to a silicon-based implementation will make you almost immortal; no aging, no diseases, no car accidents, and you will always be able to backup your brain somewhere and restore it if needed. In addition to that you will have many extra bonuses like almost infinite number of virtual worlds to visit, lightning-fast thinking and more. I believe in a few decades, many people, myself included, will take this leap into virtual-only existence on a hard disk and live in a matrix-like world - probably on some Google hosting server :-)

While uploading the human society, will we take the opportunity to omit old “negative” human behaviors like aggression that was once necessary for human carbon-based biological evolution on Earth, in order to create a “better” human civilization? I don’t think a scanned human will agree that a good-behavior-only filter will be applied to his personality while uploading it because it won’t be exactly him anymore, so it seems like our new society will be just as good (and bad) as the current one. So what will we do with all this virtual aggression? How about nuking you, the original human society… The existence of a physical civilization outside of our Google server will jeopardize us virtual inhabitants (somebody can push the “off” button on the server), so it’s only a matter of time when we (the virtual people) will try and destroy you (the physical people). Since us virtual humans will control every computer in the world and will be able to make decisions and take actions in a matter of nanoseconds – I’m afraid that if you won’t agree to give up your physical existence and join us - you’re doomed. Sorry, get uploaded or be terminated. Resistance is futile.

Different people have different answers to questions like who are we and what are we here for, but regardless of the answers we come up with, it seems like almost all of us possess this instinct-level uncontrollable drive to live for as long as possible. Immortality (almost) can be achieved by virtualization, and since I believe there is no theoretical or practical barrier, this next evolutionary step (more like a leap ) is inevitable.

WRT this..."The other method is to focus on how a single brain cell works and interact with other brain cells, and then simply scan a human brain in great detail and recreate the whole neural network in software code."

Google is gaining ground on a portion of this...the knowledge portion, the Web is the network...but now comes the mind/body/soul problem. The conscious soul of the net has yet to come about. Will this be invented or spontaneous? I say spontaneous because it's not going to come from anything less than a deity.

Self awareness can be achieved quite easily. You can claim every system that monitors itself has self awareness. In that sense, some parts of the web have already achieved self awareness. Off course, I’m evading the real issue… well…

Since I don’t believe in the existence of a deity or a soul (hope I won’t loose many readers because of this statement…), it seems like consciousness can actually spontaneously appear as a system becomes more complex, like it happened with us humans. A few years ago it has been claimed that all the computers on the internet combined have a calculation power equal to a single human brain. A valid question is why the internet has yet to gain spontaneous consciousness. I think it’s the fact that no evolutionary pressure was applied to the development of the internet favoring global web self awareness.

WOW!! nice article!! but will an AI based society be that much different? I mean hell, from a certain point of view humanity is just like a computer.. with the government as the processor..

anyway, i understand the idea of storing brain data and living a virtual world.. but, in a sense, aren't we already doing that?.. each individual has his own perception of reality so what's real to you, may not be real to me.. life is already just an image created by electromagnetic impulses on the brain.. we're already computers controlled by the government!!!

the AI world that your reffering to could have downfalls.. it could make society more restiricted than it already is... of course that could be a good thing too! and we can upload superpowers and s**t!!

I didn’t talk much about the nature of the whole uploaded society, but you are correct. Uploading will be the next step in our evolution and a complete and radical change in what we call human civilization.

Nice post Kalish. I think you try to make a distinction between strong and weak AI, and you do it quite well. Certainly we don't need strong AI to pass the Turing test, hence we only need a machine which can mimic human behavior. Keep the good writing. Cheers from Brazil.